(WGHP) — October is a great month for planting cool-weather flowers and vegetables. Also, a lot of folks use this time to get the lawn back in shape after a hot summer.
The key to that fabulous, lush green lawn or a bumper crop of broccoli is water. Sometimes during the month of October, Mother Nature helps us out. Other times, you have to do the watering.
So far, the water bill for Oct. 2023 could be a pricy one.
It’s still early in the month, but the Piedmont is not getting rain on a regular basis. Dry cold fronts and high-pressure systems are keeping our rain chances pretty low. Plus, tropical systems have mostly avoided the Triad.
While we don’t like the destruction tropical systems can bring, they supply us with needed rainfall. According to the Climate Prediction Center, Oct. 2023 rainfall could be 40% to 50% below normal.
On average, the Piedmont receives 3.10 inches of rain in October. Our driest October wasn’t long ago. Oct. 2000 finished with just a trace of rain.
Our wettest was Oct. 1990 when the Piedmont Triad International Airport wrapped up the month with nearly 13 inches of rain.
Looking at more recent data, Oct. 2021 and Oct. 2022 were dry. Oct. 2018, Oct. 2019 and Oct. 2020 were wet Octobers thanks to tropical systems.
Melissa, Nestor, Michael, Delta, and Zeta were some of the tropical or former tropical systems that soaked the Piedmont during the month of October.
Oct. 2017 was pretty close to the average of 3.10 inches of rain. There was a little above-average rainfall in 2015 and 2016.
Oct. 2013 and Oct. 2014 were below average.
As for Oct. 2023, if we continue to see dry cold fronts, there’s a chance we could finish with one of the driest Octobers on record.
This will make our lawns and wallets very unhappy.
